


On Passion

by orphan_account



Series: on passion and buckets [1]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alien Biology, F/F, Gen, Headcanon, Human Biology, Troll Romance, Xeno, post-victory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-07
Updated: 2012-06-07
Packaged: 2017-11-07 04:16:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,248
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/426823
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In the shiny new universe post-Victory, Miss Rose Lalonde and Miss Kanaya Maryam work hand-in-hand to see to the hatching and raising of the Virgin Mother Grub.</p><p>Unfortunately, complications (and some startling conversations about reproduction) ensue.</p>
            </blockquote>





	On Passion

**Author's Note:**

> note for context: at this point in canon reveals, it is pretty clear that the condesce wants the alpha kids to play the game because the reverse alchemization process shown for an item (in one of jane's panels) will allow her to get her hands on a matriorb and, thus, rebuild her empire. i am assuming that post-victory means that Our Heroes get their hands on the matriorb instead.
> 
> the rest is all my horrible headcanons and a mild au setting that can be freely interpreted as the same continuity as "miindgame2".
> 
> a question worth asking: why does it matter how passionate you are for your kismesis or matesprit? And furthermore: why are buckets so lewd?

For yourself, the battle had not concluded with the Victory.  The Victory had removed obstacles in the way of your overall quest; but even in a fresh and sparkling new universe, and although you had wept in relief, you were not done, your species was still, as Rose put it over a cup of tea, littlest finger smartly arched, _in the red._  
  
Miss Lalonde had proved an excellent and wholly palatable companion, demure and viciously intelligent, possessing a keen eye and an iron stomach for the alien.  She was fascinated by the biology of your species - which was not to imply that this fascination was not mutual, simply that Rose went above and beyond the call of duty as a dedicated cross-cultural diplomat.  She was the only human in attendance at the hatching of the Virgin Mother Grub, eyes wide and luminous in the cave you had selected as the first breeding cavern; it had a rich, verdant growth of bioluminescent plants and pleasantly warm hot springs gurgling up out of the ground, an area that Aradia had assured you would remain geologically stable for the next three hundred years.  
  
"Will she keep all of her legs as she matures, or will she shed them?" Rose had asked, staring at the Mother Grub's six thousand writhing appendages, undisturbed.  It made you feel flushed, dizzy for Lalonde, because to you, the Mother Grub was beautiful, glistening and squirming and chirping fresh out of the orb.  You had not expected that Rose would be able to stomach the sight; she was made of stern stuff.    
  
Karkat had vomited and had been escorted away in hysterical tears by Mr Nitram, who had been in a similar state.  Karkat's moirail had not attended the hatching.    
  
You had pursed your lips.  It disrupted your complexion to spend much time thinking of Gamzee, and all the ways you wished he were dead.  The fresh universe of your Victory was marred by his presence.  
  
"Legs.  The majority of them will be shed, yes," you had answered, and proceeded to point out the sets of limbs that would remain - the opposable ones, triple-jointed, would grow longer and suitable for walking or burrowing.  
  
The Virgin Mother Grub's eyes were useless vestigial bumps on top of her precious head; she would navigate by touch, smell, and taste.  The slimy fronds flickering excitedly out the five orifices dotting her skull would develop into fully articulated tongue-like structures, mouths and nostrils capable of closing.  The ears were almost impossible to see; they were buried in the soft, fat flesh of her neck.  
  
Rose had been fascinated by your impromptu lesson, winning you and impressing you with her careful, intelligent questions and her fortitude when the Virgin Mother spat out her first meal all over your shoes.  You supposed, blushing, that it was not so surprising after all.  Miss Lalonde was well acquainted with horrorterrors; a few tentacles and a bit of noxious slime could not put her out.  
  
"Shall I assume an invitation to the first slurry feeding?" she had said, arching a brow at you and _leering_ , and you privately thought to yourself that only an idiot would fail to notice the resemblance to Dave Strider.  "I doubt it'll turn my stomach."  
  
Permission was granted; flirtatious gothic overtures were performed; you drank red wine that she had probably stolen from her alcoholic mom-daughter-sister and gossiped like thieves, slowly inching closer to one another.  
  
Unfortunately, the first batch of (anonymously donated, concupiscent pail, red and teal) slurry you acquired to feed the Virgin only made her spit it all out, again all over your persons.  This was troubling.   Subsequent batches were also rejected, accompanied by unhappy chirruping, the Virgin Mother squirming uncomfortably and trying to hide in her own coiled tail, and you were at your wits' end.  What was _wrong?_    
  
She was at the right stage in her growth cycle to be hungry for slurry, her digestive sacs were plump with acids to break down and churn and recombine genetic material, she was large and healthy enough to hold a clutch of eggs in her gullet and regurgitate them into the perfectly-heated slime pits.  You were so _frustrated_ with her - with yourself.  
  
"Perhaps there are more informative texts available," Rose suggested, frowning, sharing your worry.  "Something more detailed.  Something that would cover this situation."  
  
You bit your lower lip.  You didn't have time to sift through a mountain of material by yourself, the Virgin Mother Grub would grow ill if she didn't perform her function; the digestive sacs would eventually rupture, killing her from the inside, your _precious angel._  
  
Rose laced her fingers in yours, giving you a soft, gentle look.  "I'll help," she murmured, lips brushing the pointed tip of your ear.  
  
Eventually, you discovered a potential solution.  
  
It was as troubling as it was relieving.  
  
-  
  
"Essentially," you mused, because it was always helpful to organize one's thoughts by explaining them to another person, "there is an enzyme which she will not learn to manufacture on her own until she is exposed to it."  
  
"I object to your factually and biologically incorrect usage of the word _learn,"_ Rose said, cranky, sipping a cup of black coffee and running her hands through her pale hair, eyes shadowed with lack of sleep.  "Let us be as precise as possible, Kanaya.  The portions of her genome which are responsible for the production of that particular enzyme are silenced by an epigenetic sheath."  
  
"A sheath which is deactivated by an introduction to the very enzyme whose production it prohibits," you parry, gracefully accepting her correction.  She is quite right.  You pause.  "On Alternia, she would have fed on the effluvia of her foremothers.  It would have been passed down by the older generation."  
  
"Did you ever have a Troll Joseph Heller?" Rose asks, darkly, scowling at the stacks of books you have piled in the Useless corner.  
  
"Yes," you say; and you frown, matching her grimace with one of your own.  Under normal circumstances, you suppose you would be delighted to be up late discussing research with Rose.  "I agree.  This would seem to be quite a catch-22 situation."  
  
"... Seem?" she prods, taking a sip of coffee and smiling a little at you, coaxing you to think aloud.  You wince.  
  
"We did not _evolve,_ Miss Lalonde, to use buckets," you hedge.  "They are a relatively modern convenience, evolutionarily speaking."  
  
You can see the fine hairs on her arms raise in a beautifully foreign mammalian reaction.  Goosebumps, they are called.  The wonders of erectile tissue.  
  
"Go on," she says, slowly.  
  
"Forgive me my reticence," you demur, fidgeting with your empty mug.  "It is not a subject fit for civil conversation."  
  
"Then let us be foul, Maryam," she counters, her tiny smile widening to a brief, saucy grin.  
  
You struggle to word this.  "We will be obliged to get down and dirty with our bad selves," you tell her, quoting Socrates.  "That particular enzyme can be found in abundance under very specific, naturally occuring biological circumstances in the adult troll body, you see."  
  
"Ah," Rose says, extrapolating quite a bit, eyebrows at their full height.  
  
"Correct," you say.  "We are going to have to do this the _old-fashioned way._ "

"You... aren't built for live young," Rose remarks, obliquely.  You can see the thoughts churning behind her eyes.  
  
"Archaic writings advise the... _vessels,_ " you say, "to pail their matesprits first and go to their kismesises second."  You are fidgeting with the cuff of your off-the-shoulder asymmetrical silk blouse, fighting the olive green flush that is rising in your face.  "It is not, correctly speaking, a gestation period - at least insofar as I understand the word.  But it is an incredibly unpleasant, incredibly arduous process."  
  
"So.  You need either a caliginous or concupiscent pair to activate an old biological mechanism for you, and provide you with... what, exactly?" Rose presses.  
  
"Pre-activated combined slurry," you say, as delicately as possible.  "Thus, my dilemma."  
  
Rose appears quite sober, steepling her fingers and frowning.  You like watching her think, when she is like this; figuring out what, exactly, neither of you know.  
  
"Forgive me," she says, abruptly, her brow furrowed with deep contemplation of things beyond your ethereal ken.  "I don't understand the problem."  
  
"The volunteer will have to be of a high blood caste, as a large amount of physical stamina is necessary to survive the pseudo-gestation," you begin, scribbling notes on a scrap of paper with one of the many, many scattered pens.  "Their partner will need to be strong enough to survive them, during the ... process," you add, wrinkling your nose.  "As an example, Vriska and Eridan might have been perfect, but their feelings for one another have disintegrated."  
  
"Maryam, if it's for the sake of something as dire as the _survival of your species_ ," Rose says, very slowly, and you can tell that she is geniunely perplexed, "can these fruity assholes not _take one for the proverbial team?"  
_  
That is the crux of the issue, of course.  
  
They cannot.  
  
You stare at her.  Does she think that all you need to do to make grubs is _fill a bucket with someone?_  
  
"Rose, don't be vile," you stammer.  "What kind of species could possibly reproduce regardless of the earnestness of a pair's mutual feelings?"  
  
"... Mine," Rose tells you, blinking.  
  
You are at a loss.  
  
"... If the feelings between a kismesis pair or a matesprit pair are not strong enough," you say, stiffly, "then the amount of hormones they release into their slurry during the act of pailing each other is not sufficient to trigger the proper chain reaction.  They cannot dissolve the epigenetic barrier around their DNA, which would allow their genes to recombine."    
  
This is very basic stuff, and it disturbs you to see Rose look _wistful._   Every attentive student of Alternian biology knew these things.  There are two sheaths that must be dissolved before troll reproduction can be possible.  The first barrier to recombination is typically removed simply by the interaction of the two compatible types of slurry.  After enough time in a sufficiently heated relationship, the bodies of the participants adapt to the DNA of their partner, altering the composition of their slurry to allow it to combine with that of their beloved.  (Or beloathed.)  
  
The second barrier is the issue in question, here. Eventually, the body of a vessel troll can begin to secrete an enzyme that dissolves it; but it is a lengthy process of several weeks and repeated pailing.  
  
"How very romantic your species is," Rose says softly, at odds with your current course of thought, shuffling the papers closest to her arms into a neat stack.  She taps them slowly with her black-polished fingernails.  "Human females, once fertilized, can be made to bear young regardless of their feelings on the matter."    
  
... You feel a bit sick.    
  
Her jaw is clenched and her eyes are narrowed and your bloodpusher lurches.  You think that that's the saddest thing you've ever heard.  
  
A species in which evolutionary success can be achieved by rape?  The implications disgust you; the vessels that were the weakest to physical coercion would end up dominating the gene pool hand-in-hand with their stronger rapists, which could explain the creepy sexual dimorphism you observed on Earth.  How long were humans around, again?  How many tens of thousands of years did this go on?  
  
Sweet merciful fuck, you think to yourself: this is some _truly whack shit._  
  
And then you feel incredibly guilty.    
  
The cancer of Bilious Slick was not purely Karkat's fault, despite his self-loathing belief to the contrary.  You had all had a hand in fucking the humans's universe up; yours was the poisoned session that gave birth to theirs.  In a small but devastating way, you are all to blame for this.  
  
"... I'm sorry," you say, faltering, as if one apology could ever be adequate for the condemnation of an entire species to lives of sickening brutality.  Your pre-scratch ancestors had made the decision voluntarily for your own people; the humans had never had a choice.  
  
"Oh.  Don't be," Rose tells you, smiling a little.  "SBURB gave us a variety of tools to combat this issue.  We intend to make the most of them."  
  
"... Your friendleader?"  
  
"Yes.  The palhoncho Egbert himself," Rose says, and you can see how fond she is of her friend in the way her eyes crinkle at the corners.  The movement is so familiar, and the eyes are so alien, it is poetry made flesh.  "We've salvaged the ectobiology equipment; he's trying to figure something out.  Vantas is helping."  
  
John, you think, looking at Rose's slight frame and her delicate hands, the tiny point of her chin, her rounded ears, the vulnerability of her frailty. You decide then and there that you can forgive him for impersonating Rose and throwing a wrench into the progress of your relationship with her; because John Egbert, it turns out, is _wonderful.  
_  
"Now, then," Rose says, nudging you back towards the original topic of conversation, taking your coffee mug and refilling it for you.  "Regarding the pseudo-gestation and your reluctance to settle on a suitable pair of candidates."  
  
"Ah, yes," you demur.  "That."  
  
If Karkat is everyone's moirail, and Vriska is everyone's kismesis, well, you would feel comfortable describing yourself as your group's go-to auspistice.    
  
It will be easiest for you to cherry-pick a blackrom couple; they all come to you for advice.  You already have one in mind.  
  
You just don't think they'll agree to it.


End file.
